The biggest pop-punk band to emerge from the Baltimore scene, All Time Low has overcome weak radio airplay, building its fan-base through constant touring. Their fourth album aims for new heights, with “For Baltimore” and “Somewhere in Neverland” bringing solid hooks.

The R&B singer’s first album of new material in four years guns for chart success, co-writing with Chris Brown, Frank Ocean and Mario Winans, among others. Entertainment Weekly calls Two Eleven an “intimate, often ethereal, collection.”

A rarities collection from the Athens, Georgia band, Daughters of Cloud brings together the best of their mixture of electronica, funk, glam and afrobeat via 17 tracks, ten previously unreleased and seven otherwise rare or out of print.

This generation seems to be having trouble finding a unique voice. Listened to the clips, have Lana’s new album. There’s nothing there.

That will happen when the drummer, guitarist and bass player are treated like a GarageBand program. What I’m hearing aside from that, are tired arrangements I’ve heard a zillion times, like this Soundgarden clip. Listen to Jeff Beck, Tal Wilkenfeld and Vinnie Colaiuta at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. That’s music. Whatever you think of it, it’s a happening with the entire band fully engaged and they don’t care if you like it or not – there is no pandering.

Again, whether you like them or not, when you listen to Ram by Paul McCartney or the Layla album or The Who, among many, many others, you hear unique expressions whose artistic energy, integrity and enthusiasm is simply hard to match for the current generation.

You can screw up your faces and sweat all you want, when it’s not real it’s not real.

The gamechanger of course is that young people prefer music aimed at their generation, no matter how bad it is compared to what came before. I cannot make that leap. You see the same thing in film and literature today. We need new things – that’s the nature of pop art. It’s consumed and we move on to the next, no matter what it is, choosing the best, even when it’s the worst relative to what came before.

In truth, we’ve gone back to the 3 min. hit record like in the early ’60s, but without the songwriting, producing and arranging talent. The new, current and hep generation are bigger rednecks than the mythical conformist rednecks were.